


twice inked

by stravaganza



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Based on a Tumblr Post, Bisexual Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, First Meetings, Flirting, London, M/M, Mentions of Andy/Quynh, Sort Of, Tattoos, but it's nearly 5am so i might write more to this universe another time, kaysanova, mistakes were made!Nicky, still not beta read but at least I've re-read it now, tattoo artist!Joe, tattoo cover up, tramp stamp, working myself out of writer's block one tumblr post at the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza
Summary: “Are we done for today?” Joe asked with a deep sigh, rubbing his eyes.He had just finished sanitising everything in the room, watching as Nile waved the latest (very satisfied) client of this very long day as they left the shop. His apprentice-slash-assistant joined him with a mug of fresh tea and shook her head, swapping out the fresh brew for the bottle of rubbing alcohol Joe was holding.“No, we still have a client waiting in the other room. He says it’s a cover up job, but by how tense he looks you’d think it was his first time,” she commented as she wiped the tattoo gun again. Joe let her; twice was always better than once in his line of work.“Right, right. I forgot it was scheduled for today,” he said, taking a fortifying sip of Assam melody.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 56
Kudos: 385





	twice inked

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this Tumblr [post](https://stravaganzawrites.tumblr.com/post/633190440114569216/tattoo-removalist-au-where-joe-works-at-a-laser)

“Are we done for today?” Joe asked with a deep sigh, rubbing his eyes.

He had just finished sanitising everything in the room, watching as Nile waved the latest (very satisfied) client of this very long day as they left the shop. His apprentice-slash-assistant joined him with a mug of fresh tea and shook her head, swapping out the fresh brew for the bottle of rubbing alcohol Joe was holding.

“No, we still have a client waiting in the other room. He says it’s a cover up job, but by how tense he looks you’d think it was his first time,” she commented as she wiped the tattoo gun again. Joe let her; twice was always better than once in his line of work.

“Right, right. I forgot it was scheduled for today,” he said, taking a fortifying sip of Assam melody.

He always scheduled the cover ups late in the day, often as his last appointment, to compensate for the usually rather difficult job of drawing over someone else’s work in a way that was both pleasant and concealing. Sometimes it didn’t take much; more often than not, however, it took a long time, depending on the client’s indecisiveness and the way the previous tattoo was done. Joe was pretty good at what he did but he had his limits, and having to completely hide what was supposed to be a whole pouncing tiger on a man’s back was one of them. In that particular case he had suggested having at least part of the tattoo removed, and then coming back to touch it up: today, he hoped it didn’t come to that.

“You did. Hopefully it won’t take too long,” Nile said, reading his mind.

“Mmh. We’ll see.” The one perk was that they weren't expecting anyone else - but then again, that was the reason he kept cover ups last. Worse case, nightmare tiger scenario, they would reschedule a longer session for another day. “Alright, let him in. And as usual you’re free to go, after. I’ll handle the cleaning when I’m done,” Joe said as Nile finished her round of sanitising.

“Aw, thanks boss! You’re always the best,” she grinned, leaving the bottle and returning to the shop’s waiting room. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir,” she saluted.

Joe chuckled. He really liked the girl - she had potential, yes, but also personality. That was sometimes hard to find, especially in a line of work where a lot of the time people asked for the same thing, over and over again - Japanese and Chinese words, butterflies and stars, a name in a curly font with sometimes a date and a few hearts. It could be very disheartening, and Joe knew many tattoo artists who felt trapped in their own job, stuck doing the same thing again and again, time after time, until they were just going through the motions, lost and feeling they had no legacy of their own. Booker often joked that he couldn’t remember what on Earth had made him want to follow this career path, and that he would’ve had more creative freedom as an IT consultant.

He understood his resentment all too well. He had felt the same way - still did, sometimes - before he had met Andy. People like her and her wife reminded him why he did this: to express himself, sure, but also to put another person’s vision on their body, to breathe life and art onto skin and to turn an idea into reality with the help of a little creativity. His mother had never understood why Joe couldn’t just have been a painter before meeting Andy and seeing the honest-to-god _stories_ Joe had drawn on her.

He wondered which he was going to get tonight, but the reminder of some of his best pieces - exposed in tasteful pictures hanging around his studio - was enough to put a smile back on his face and optimistic enthusiasm into his night.

Joe put the mug on his desk, pulled out a few sealed needles from the drawer, then opened his sketchbook to a fresh page and slid a pencil between the pages.

He was debating whether to pull out some inks or not, if that would influence his client's choices and would that be a bad thing?, when the door closed behind him. He turned to greet his client, but the words evaporated from his mind as soon as he laid eyes on him.

The man was _tense_. Balled up fists and clenched jaw tense. Fight-or-flight response tense.

That was no good.

“Hello there! Nice to meet you. Please, take a seat,” Joe said, pointing at the armchair in a corner of the room. It was technically for friends or family offering emotional support to his clients but with the way this guy was standing, all squared shoulders and rigid limbs, pointing at the tattoo chair might have just made him run away screaming. “I believe you’re here for a cover up, is that still the case?”

The words seemed to make something tick in the man’s head. He blinked, his blue eyes returning Joe’s gaze rather than staring straight through him like a terrified rabbit, and he nodded his head jerkily.

“Yes, it is. Good evening,” he said, as if remembering his manners. He walked to the armchair and sat stiffly, and Joe sat back in his swivel chair to help him feel less crowded in.

“Can I offer you something? Water, tea? My assistant just made me some, so there’s probably some water left in the kettle. I can just ask her to make another, it’s no trouble. I’m afraid I don’t have alcoholic beverages, though - I have a strict ‘no drunken tattooies’ policy,” he said with a smile, hoping to ease the tension.

The man’s eye twitched, and Joe briefly wondered if he’d touched a nerve, if that was the reason his client regretted his tattoo and now wanted it gone, before reminding himself it was none of his business.

“No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. I just want this over with as quickly as possible, sir.”

The way the man’s voice lilted on the last word told Joe that he had an accent, and he smiled a bit more broadly at the realisation they were both foreigners in a big city. It was silly - London was huge and chock-full of immigrants of all kinds and backgrounds, after all - but Joe always found himself feeling immediate kinship with fellow outsiders.

“Well, first of all, please, there’s no need to call me sir! We must be about the same age, and I’m not ready to feel old yet,” he joked, bringing a hand over his heart as if he had been grievously wounded. That seemed to get him a small twitch of his client’s lips, although it still looked like a nervous tic more than anything. “I’m just Yusuf, or Joe if you prefer,” he introduced himself.

“Nicolò. Nicky,” the other man said. He started to bounce his leg, and Joe wanted to flinch in sympathy.

“So, Nicolò,” he said instead, “what can I help you with? By the looks of it, you’re not exactly thrilled at the idea of having a needle on you.”

Nicky blinked, leg stilling mid-bounce, then slowly let his heel touch the floor.

“That’s not... that’s not quite it,” he admitted, sounding strained. “It’s. Well, the thing is... It’s a tattoo I got many, many years ago, in a bout of rebellion against pretty much everything that had been going on in my life until that moment. At the time it had felt liberating, powerful even, but soon...”

“It just became embarrassing?” Joe offered with a sympathetic look.

“Yeah,” Nicky nodded. “It’s the sort of thing that can ruin a relationship.”

Joe tensed minutely. He took in his client, the way he still seemed ready to bolt, his fists still clenched over his knees; the blue eyes shadowed by brown hair, the furrowed brows and the pale skin, and felt himself respond to that with clenched fists of his own in the remote chance Nicky's wasn't tense with nerves but with aggression.

“It’s...” He cleared his throat. Well, there was no nice way to say it, really. “Your tattoo, is it a white supremacy symbol of some sort?”

Nicolò’s head jerked up at that, his wide eyes meeting Joe’s. The shock he could read in them wasn’t enough to reassure Joe, though.

“No!” Nicky said, a bit louder than before. He didn’t sound indignant or offended at the assumption, just surprised, which was good. “No, of course not.”

“I had to ask,” Joe raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry, but with the world we live in today-- well, let’s say I’m always ready to punch a nazi and you had me worried there for a second.” Nicky still looked like Joe had just shot his dog, though. “Many apologies, but I found that safe is better than sorry.”

That seemed to calm him down. Nicky slumped a bit in the chair and averted his gaze, shaking his head.

“No, no, it’s understandable. I was just taken aback. I didn’t think of the idea you might get,” he admitted. “Nor that I could look like a redeemed fascist.”

“That’s okay,” Joe said with a chuckle. “At least now you know that whatever it is you have to show me, it’s not the worst thing in the world you could’ve gotten.”

“I suppose,” Nicky said. Despite the awkwardness, he now looked way more relaxed than he had when he had first arrived.

Joe heard the door of the shop open and close, and he knew that Nile had flipped the ‘open’ side before leaving, making sure no one would disturb them despite the lights still being on.

“Come on, then. I promise you, whatever it is, there’s worse out there.”

Nicky looked up at the encouragement, still looking a bit uncertain.

“I haven’t gone to a beach shirtless in seven years. It’s a bit strange now to just... expose it to a stranger,” he admitted.

There was a moment of silence, but before Joe could say something about Nicky being among friends here, his client stood up from the armchair. He slowly removed his layers: his jacket, gracefully draped it over the chair’s armrest, then his blue shirt, that brought out his eyes and was folded carefully on the seat, and finally his t-shirt, untucked from his trousers and pulled over his head in one smooth movement. This last piece of clothing wasn’t immediately taken care of - rather, Nicky held it in his hands in a small ball, as if it could shield him from what would happen next.

Joe looked the man over, in as professional a manner as he could. Nicky was well built, with broad shoulders and a well defined chest. His arms were muscular, bulging up a bit with the way he was holding himself, and while his abs weren’t the washboard kind you’d see on the cover of a magazine, they were still pretty nice to look at. Joe met Nicky’s eyes in a silent question when he couldn’t find what he was looking for, and the man sighed deeply through his nose. He turned around, taking a moment to fold the shirt with the rest of his clothes and delay the inevitable. Joe drank him in again, unable to help himself - his shoulders were _really_ broad - but again he couldn’t seem to find the offending _oh sweet mother of god_.

Nicky had opened his trousers and let them slide down his legs, an arduous feat with how thick his thighs were, where they stopped at the knee, exposing the white pair of slips he was wearing. Before Joe could say anything more, Nicky was turning the high waistband down, and there it was.

Well, at least now Joe understood why Nicky had looked like a man walking up to the executioner’s block.

In faded, once black letters, the tattoo on the small of Nicky’s back read “free entrance”. The worst part was probably the downward pointing arrow, though.

“Believe it or not, it’s not the first time I work on something like this,” is the first thing Joe thought of saying, hoping it would reassure the man.

“It isn’t?” he asked, hopeful.

“Not at all! A lot of people regret getting tramp-- _ahem_. And, I’ve deleted plenty of names over the years. This should be a piece of cake,” he said confidently.

Nicky let the elastic snap back in place and pulled his pants further up, probably out of habit to make sure the tattoo was covered, then pulled his trousers back up. He turned to look at Joe, fly still open, and the artist had to remind himself that it wouldn’t be professional to look down.

He cleared his throat and pushed himself backwards, letting his chair glide across the room and to his desk. He took a _long_ sip of tea and picked his sketchbook up before rolling back to Nicky.

“I’m going to need to see it again, to get it down,” he told him. “Did you have anything in mind for how you wish to hide it?” It was a fairly standard question, and he expected a fairly standard answer.

“Not quite.” _Ah, there it is_. “I'd prefer to avoid anything too big, if possible. And, I think the colour scheme is limited to black? But I hadn’t picked anything out. Just-” he seemed to remember as he turned around and exposed himself again, “please, I’d rather not get one of those tribal swirls. I don’t think it would suit me.”

"That won’t be a problem,” Joe agreed easily as he copied the tattoo on paper. He looked at the design, at the way the letters were spaced, and frowned. Whoever had made this had thought wise to seek some sort of symmetry by cutting the word ‘entrance’ in the middle, so the result was more of a ‘free en | trance’ then what a young Nicky might’ve envisioned. All the more reason to get it fixed, really. “You can sit now, and we can brainstorm. Would you like to tell me something about yourself? That way I can make you something more relevant, more personal.”

Nicky didn’t need being asked twice. He put his t-shirt back on as well, on Joe’s insistence that it might take a moment.

“Well... I got that tattoo a little over nine- no, actually, about ten years ago, now,” he recounted, sounding surprised by the math. “I had just turned twenty and I wanted to run away from everything. I had a bit of a falling out with pretty much everyone. My family, my faith, even my city.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said sincerely. Nicky seemed relaxed now, with his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned forward. He didn’t try to sneak a peak of Joe’s sketchbook as he worked, though. “Couldn’t have been easy.”

“No, not really. I could’ve reacted a bit better, if I’m being honest. But I had just realised that I’m bisexual and decided to quit the seminary, and my parents weren’t exactly thrilled by that,” he said with a wiggle of his fingers - not quite air quotes, but rather a gesture between jazz hands and what a dastardly cartoon villain might do. “Running away to another country had felt like the best solution. Somewhere more tolerant, and... well, less early 2000s Italy.”

Joe nodded as he listened, his pencil moving on the paper as the words painted an image in his head.

“So I couch surfed for a bit, found odds jobs and saved up until I could move to London. Once here, I did pretty much the same thing. Except at least here the jobs were less hard to find, as long as you didn’t mind waiting tables and handling Italian tourists.”

Joe hummed and drew a detail, then crossed it over with the scratching sound of pencil on paper.

“And what about now? What do you do now?” he asked, hoping he sounded focused rather than distracted.

“I still handle Italian tourists,” Nicky admitted, but there was a smile in his voice now. “I work at the British Museum, mostly in the Medieval Europe section. I got a history degree and us guides rotate, technically, but people love it when you’re explaining them about the Roman Empire and sprinkle Italian words in your exposition.” He sounded really proud of his job, and Joe smiled brightly and told him as much.

“You’re right to be proud, that’s one hell of an accomplishment! Not everyone can get where you are,” he said, looking over the page at Nicky.

“Where _we_ are,” he pointed out, and Joe was startled into a laugh.

“Yeah, you’re right! Where we are,” he agreed.

He talked about himself for a while - about how he had been born in Tunisia, but his mother had taken him and his siblings to London when Joe was still pretty small, hoping to find something better than what she could offer them there. How she had never told him to stop pursuing his dream of being an artist, even if it was risky, and how she never told him to switch careers even though she didn’t understand why he would want to ink _people_ for a living. He told Nicky about his sister’s masters and his brother’s job, and revealed how he too wasn’t the straightest tool in the shed - “But you probably got that from the pride flags, eh?” - and how he too was religious, although in his own way.

Before he knew it, an hour had passed. Nicky was far more relaxed now: their chat had seemingly turned them from strangers to acquaintances to friends. As it turned out, they had a lot more in common than just their roots being in London despite coming from someplace else.

“Ok, so. I think it’s ready. You can tell me if you don’t like it, of course - I promise I won’t be mad.”

“Isn’t your job to give the client what _they_ want?”

“Technically yes, but that doesn’t mean my feelings won’t be hurt!”

Nicky laughed, and Joe followed suit. He handed the sketchbook over and cracked his stiff knuckles before shaking out his hands to relax the muscles. He watched as the smile still on Nicky’s lips fell into a small gape, his eyes going wide.

“It’s... it’s beautiful!”

“Well, don’t sound too surprised,” Joe said with an amused grin. “It’s not too much, then?”

Nicky shook his head as he traced the drawing with his fingertips, almost reverently.

“May I ask what your reasoning for this was?”

Joe shrugged and laced his fingers together behind his head.

“Well, you’re bi and that reminded me of that sentence - ‘the moon has phases, bisexuals do not’.” Nicky nodded.

“And the sword?” he asked, still staring at the picture, drinking it in as if it could disappear if he looked away too long. “Is it because I work in a museum?”

Joe chuckled, and shook his head.

“Well... yeah, there’s that. But mostly it’s because you’re a fighter, Nicky. You ran from all you knew, worked hard enough you were able to move to a different country, and then made a life for yourself here - a degree, a job, a bad tattoo that will now be replaced by a better tattoo! That should all be commemorated, don’t you think?”

Nicky nodded. He still seemed transfixed, and that made Joe’s chest swell with pride.

“It won’t be too big?” he asked, finally tearing his gaze away to meet Joe’s.

“No, I don’t think so. Thankfully, the old tattoo doesn’t have too thick lines and the font isn’t too bold. It’ll be completely covered up, and you won’t have anything to worry about next time you date someone.” Joe smirked. “Unless you want me to just cross out the ‘r’ and turn it into a ‘fee entrance’ sign.”

Nicky honest-to-god snorted at that, and Joe would be damned if that wasn’t the cutest laughter he had heard in... well, quite a lot.

“I haven’t been much interested in dating, lately, but if you think ‘fee entrance’ will help me bag a husband...” he replied, his eyes glinting with amusement and mischief in equal parts.

Joe found it impossible to hide his grin.

“Could always try it out and come back if you change your mind. Call it a test drive.”

Nicky snorted again, and Joe found that his heart was soaring.

“I’d rather have some real art on me this time. No more rebellion, no more acts of defiance. Just acts of...”

“Self-acceptance and self-love?” Joe offered when Nicky floundered a bit.

“I suppose those aren’t too bad,” Nicky allowed with a smile.

For a long moment they just kept looking at each other, twin grins on their faces, and it took a lot of strength for Joe to say, “Well, let’s get to work, then. Shall we?”

He didn’t really want their conversation to be over just yet. He considered whether it would be weird if he asked for Nicky’s number, when the man in question cleared his throat.

“And speaking of dating... I don’t suppose you might have plans for dinner after we’re done here?”

 _Oh_.

“No, no plans,” Joe said, forcing himself not to sound too eager. But at the way Nicky smiled, he just couldn’t help himself. “Besides, you could use some help applying lotion on such a difficult to reach spot.”

Nicky’s eyebrow quirked up, together with the corner of his lips, as if to say, _Ah, so that’s how we’re playing?_

“Now that you mention it, I just might need a hand.”

Joe bit his lip, trying to no avail to stifle a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> twice inked (twinked)
> 
> I'm sorry, it's late. But I hope you've enjoyed this!  
> [Here's the tattoo design I had in mind.](https://imgur.com/1MMVsJl) Tip of the sword has the arrow in it, the moon phases cover the letters. I can't draw so this is the best I could do - I suppose irl the design would be prettier, but graphic design is my passion so there's that.


End file.
